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Burger King Takes A Shot At Chick-Fil-A By Donating Chicken Sandwich Profits To HRC

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The chicken sandwich wars are really heating up out there. Popeyes was just the beginning; now Burger King will spend Pride month donating profits from its new chicken sandwich to Human Rights Campaign.

Burger King’s announcement last week that they would donate 40 cents to Human Rights Campaign for each of their new Ch’King sandwiches sold during June, aka LGBTQ Pride Month, was cool and classy enough in and of itself. But the fact that they embedded multiple shots at Chick-Fil-A within the text of the announcement tweet really made the whole thing delicious.

You all know the context for this one: Chick-Fil-A, who’ve long claimed to be the inventors of the chicken sandwich, are a family-owned national fast food chain who put their Christian values front and center, from closing on Sundays to donating large amounts of their substantial profits to religious missionary groups. In 2012, at the height of the battle over marriage equality, the Muppets pulled out of a promotional tie-in with Chick-Fil-A after the restaurant’s chief executive, Dan Cathy, made a number of public statements opposing marriage equality.

This led to a wave of negative publicity for the fast food chain, but the backlash was quickly countered by “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day,” an event organized by former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in which massive amounts of anti-LGBTQ conservatives and hard-right Republicans flooded their local Chick-Fil-A to show their support for opposing marriage equality. And the conservative love affair with Chick-Fil-A has continued ever since, even as Chick-Fil-A continued to support anti-LGBTQ non-profits with their dollars for nearly another decade, finally ending the donations last year in what the company insisted was not a response to backlash but simply a change in focus for their charitable giving.

At some point, Chick-Fil-A’s many competitors in the fast food world apparently got sick of seeing long lines and full parking lots outside one of their main rivals’ locations. Popeyes kicked off what have come to be known as “the chicken sandwich wars” by launching a rival chicken sandwich in 2019. That sandwich was so popular that the company, having planned for significantly slower sales, ran out of the ingredients for the sandwich within a few weeks of introducing it, and had to wait nearly two months to return it to market. Since then, the sandwich has remained popular, and Popeyes drive-thru lines, at least here in the Richmond area, are now often as long as Chick-Fil-A’s.

In the last year or so, the temperature has been further raised on the chicken sandwich wars, as everyone from McDonalds and Burger King to Zaxby’s and Taco Bell has introduced their own chicken sandwich, all of which are obviously modeled on the Chick-Fil-A/Popeyes template. And with their announcement last week, Burger King made the chicken sandwich wars hotter than ever.

“The #ChKing says LGBTQ rights!” is how the tweet announcing the King’s month-long donation campaign began. It referred to the time period during which the donations would take place as “#pride month,” and went on to parenthetically mention that the donations to HRC would occur “even on Sundays,” an aside accompanied by the side-eye emoji; there’s really no way to interpret that as anything other than a dig at Chick-Fil-A.

“This is a community we love dearly and have proudly supported over the years,” said a Burger King spokesperson in an interview with USA Today, “so we couldn’t miss an opportunity to take action and help shine a light on the important conversation happening.” That may very well be the case — and we do applaud it — but the fact that this will help BK sell some chicken sandwiches is undoubtedly at least some of the motivation.

Really, though, I’m not complaining at all about that. It’s better than selling sandwiches by broadcasting your hate and intolerance — something Chick-Fil-A have been doing for a decade now. And hey, I’ve actually had the Burger King Ch’King sandwich already, and it’s quite good; the horseradish sauce it comes with distinguishes it from other entrants in the chicken sandwich wars and gives it a tasty kick. While its caloric content might test the limits of your diet, you can probably afford to cheat a little bit if it’s for a good (and delicious) cause. Just sayin.

Top Photo via Burger King

Montana GOP Lawmakers Pass Discriminatory Anti-LGBTQ ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill

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More states are getting on the “religious freedom as excuse for anti-LGBTQ discrimination” train, driven by their Republican state legislatures and governors. The latest to jump on board is Montana.

Lawmakers in the Montana House and Senate have passed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” bill that will allow any person or business to discriminate against anyone for any reason if not doing so would violate their religious beliefs.

House Democrats supported an amendment that would not allow the law to be used to discriminate but Republicans refused to support it.

“Do not make me NOT do what my God tells me I have to do,” Republican Rep. John Fuller, opposing the amendment, said during Thursday’s debate, the AP reports.

“The LGBTQ community opposes the bill, arguing it could lead to challenges against ordinances in several cities that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression,” the AP adds. “The Montana Human Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

The Human Rights Campaign says the bill is “similar” to the “religious freedom” bill then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law, causing nationwide outrage.

“This bill is so sweeping and so dangerous that under it, LGBTQ Montanans could be denied access to PREP and PEP and other life-saving medications by pharmacies,” HRC said via Twitter.

News outlets are falsely comparing the Montana legislation to the federal law of the same name. The federal law does not affix personhood status to corporations, organizations, or businesses, and does not directly support anti-LGBT discrimination – the Montana law does, stating:

“Person” means any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious institution, estate, trust, foundation, or other legal entity.

Democrats tried to stop the bill’s passage but were unsuccessful.

“This bill would allow a family therapist to refuse to help an unwed mother. It would allow a pharmacist to refuse to prescribe HIV medications or oral contraceptive pills,” said state Democratic Rep. Laurie Bishop, Montana Free Press reports. “I just ask you, that as you consider this legislation, that you’d not only think about that which you want to protect, I understand that, but rather, I ask you to consider how others might use this legislation in ways that you do not intend.”

Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte (photo) is expected to sign the bill into law.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM.

Trump Political Appointee Sues Biden After Refusing to Resign

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Roger Severino, the anti-LGBTQ right-wing Christian activist who made things difficult for LGBTQ Americans during his time running HHS’s Office Of Civil Rights for Trump, is suing the Biden administration for firing him.

Roger Severino, a former Trump appointee at the Dept. of Health and Human Services who targeted LGBTQ Americans in his religious crusade as head of the Office of Civil Rights, is suing the Biden administration for firing him from his appointment by the former president to an obscure but powerful federal government agency known as ACUS.

He is refusing to resign, despite being a political appointee.

“President Biden’s attempt to remove me contrary to law exposes his lofty promises of healing and uniting all Americans as nothing more than cynical manipulation,” Severino defiantly told Newsweek.

“Because I am not one to be bullied, not even by the President himself, I will not resign my duly commissioned post and look forward to seeing how President Biden tries to justify his vindictive actions in court.”

Severino’s lawsuit claims that “President Biden has no constitutional authority under Article II to terminate Mr. Severino’s appointment to the Council.”

“The Council” is the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which holds sway over how U.S. government regulatory agencies operate.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, writes on Twitter that “Severino’s substantive argument … seems to suggest that ACUS is part of no branch of government, but instead sits outside the executive branch on some heavenly plane.”

He calls the lawsuit “bonkers, BONKERS, just eye-melting galaxy-brain-level drivel.”

Severino spent his four years in the Trump administration working tirelessly to kill protections, many installed by the Obama administration, for LGBTQ patients, effectively promoting discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. He also expanded opportunities for people of faith to claim anti-religion discrimination by creating the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division at HHS.

At HHS Severino called Obama-era protections for transgender patients “unnecessary.”

And in defending an anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” regulation, Severino told reporters, “Patients want doctors who match their values.”

As NCRM has previously reported, Severino has been called a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist by the Human Rights Campaign. He once served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He has also served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

He is married to Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions to install President Donald Trump’s extremist judges, including reportedly tens of millions of dollars to help secure Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.